My personal philobiblon

I believe books should be read and that they should be acquired with the intent to read. What one does with them beyond that is ultimately up to them. After a while, books that take up shelf space and that have not been held or thumbed-through relatively recently should be set free

I believe books should be read but that if one loses interest or they intuit that they have received what they need from said book (assuming it’s not a narrative whose conclusion one must experience), they should have no qualms about laying it aside either permanently or until they’re ready to wrap their mind around it.

I believe books can be judged by their covers. This is a falsifiable statement but until content is reconciled and balanced with presentation, it holds true.

I believe one should look up any and every word they don’t know.

The dictionary is your friend; the bigger, the better.

I believe books should be cared for. This threshold (the ratio of care to use) necessarily depends on the reader’s need for the knowledge.

Be careful of the blurb. Ensure, for instance, that what one author writes about your book hasn’t been said over someone else’s.

Books do not have to scream (and indeed they do not). They reveal their contents through give and take. You give them your time, attention and comprehension and take from them whatever message they contain.

Each line of a book is written with intent. We may skip over lines, skim sections, miss words. But the author had a different thing in mind with each word written. Perhaps some sections hold more import than others or were deliberated over—we don’t know which ones they are, unless the author tells us. This is why books must be read with care lest we miss something deep the author was trying to convey.

A book has a way of drawing you to it. I believe that if you need it, it will be there for you.